Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride

by Annie Burrows

  Just a means to an end, she sighed, going over the things he had told her. And the end he had in sight was to be the Earl of Bowdon. To the best of his not inconsiderable ability. His aims were noble, she was sure of that, even if she could not quite understand his methods yet.

  She chewed on her lower lip. Only a couple of nights ago, she had lain here, wondering what her mother would have done in similar circumstances. And she knew that Lady Aurora would have reminded her, gently, that she was a Vickery. And that a Vickery always rose to the occasion. It made no difference how her husband viewed her. She owed it to herself to do her very best.

  As soon as she had made that decision, she felt much better. And then it occurred to her that though Septimus might not yet be aware of it, he could not have lit on a more suitable bride for his purposes. In his advertisement, he had stipulated he wanted a woman of good birth and education. Well, her antecedents were every bit as good as his. And her mother, Lady Aurora, had taught her everything she herself had gleaned from the most exacting of governesses, as well as from mixing routinely in the most exalted company. Aimée knew all about the niceties of seating people at dinner parties according to their station in life, and the correct depth to curtsy to a bishop or a duke …

  And she had the requisite backbone Septimus had demanded.

  There was absolutely no reason why they could not make this marriage work. She already admired him greatly, as well as finding him attractive. And while he had been telling her about his childhood, she had felt as though they shared a common bond. They had both grown up in straitened circumstances, in spite of coming from noble parentage. She could even understand why he had employed a little subterfuge in getting her to The Lady’s Bower.

  Though she hoped that Septimus did not want her to pretend to be his first wife. He had not been very clear about what he wanted his new family to believe about that. Not that she would mind telling a few untruths, if the occasion warranted. She was well used to being economical with the truth. How would she have evaded her father’s creditors, or hung on to her virtue for so long, without employing the occasional white lie? Sometimes, the end really did justify the means. Only look at the extreme lengths she had gone to, in order to preserve her virtue! She had stolen Lord Matthison’s money and consorted with brothel-keepers and forgers in her determination to escape.

  But telling an outright lie, or posing as somebody else, was another matter entirely.

  Surely, once she managed to tell him about her background, he would see that it would be far better to let everyone know the truth. She chewed at her lower lip. How did one drop that kind of thing into the conversation? Telling him about her grandfather would sound as though she was boasting, and as for admitting to her sordid descent into the fringes of the criminal underworld.

  She shivered and pulled the quilt up higher. No, she was not ready to reveal anything of her past yet. Besides, he did not seem to be interested in it.

  Much better to win his respect by showing him what she was made of. By being exactly what he wanted her to be. An able lieutenant at his side as he battled the doughty Dowager who reigned at Bowdon Manor.

  She awoke early next morning to the sound of Nelson tapping firmly on her bedroom door. She blinked and sat up, pushing her plaits over her shoulder.

  ‘Come in!’ she called, hitching her blankets up to a more decorous level as the burly man shouldered open the door and brought in her breakfast tray.

  She had lain awake for some time the night before, wondering if her new husband meant to start trying to produce an heir straight away.

  But he had not come to her room.

  It was a little lowering to think he had preferred a lonely vigil with a brandy bottle than her company on their wedding night, but then, this was not exactly a normal marriage, was it? He had no strong feelings towards her. How could he? They were virtually strangers.

  She breakfasted, washed and dressed with an efficiency born of years of practice. And by the time Nelson returned, to ask how long it would take her to be ready to set out, she was already packed and buckling the straps on her trunk.

  Well before nightfall, she was unpacking that same trunk in a comfortable inn in Harrogate.

  In a separate room from her husband’s.

  Aimée knew she was not unattractive to the male of the species. She had been fending off would-be seducers since the day of her mother’s funeral. So it was rather ironic to find that the one man she would willingly have taken to her bed seemed to be in no hurry to share it!

  In other ways, though, over the next few days, he played the part of doting groom to the hilt. He spent hours uncomplainingly escorting her to the various outfitters Mr Jago had already ascertained were skilled enough to provide a wardrobe suited to her new station in life. He positively encouraged her to choose the most expensive materials and have them made up in the showiest styles. It might have gone to her head, had she not noticed that, when the new outfits began to arrive and she went to show him what they looked like on her, he barely raised his head from the papers that were always strewn across his desk.

  ‘Capital,’ he would say, or ‘Just the ticket'. And once, impatiently, ‘Yes, yes, every bit the Countess. Well done.’

  After that, she had returned to her room feeling deflated. She had begun to think he enjoyed treating her to the new clothes. How could she have lost sight of the fact that he was just dressing her to look the part he wanted her to play?

  And then, after they had been in town for the better part of a week, he declared she had done quite enough shopping and it was high time they got under way.

  ‘There are urgent matters awaiting my attention at Bowdon Manor,’ he snapped.

  Well, she knew that! Was that not the whole point of marrying her, so that he could return, and begin to unravel the mess his predecessor had left behind?

  She stalked off to her room and packed, seething with resentment. He had spoken to her as though she had wanted to buy so much stuff. As though she was deliberately lingering when he was impatient to be elsewhere. Men! She huffed, slamming the lid of one of her trunks shut. He was the one who had insisted she buy new clothes! But was that not typical? The only consistent thing about men was their inconsistency!

  She dropped to her knees to buckle the straps. Married one week, and already he was shifting the blame for anything that went wrong on to her shoulders. She jerked the strap tight, admitting to herself that she would not be feeling so aggrieved if he had shown a little interest in her. If he had, even once, attempted to kiss her. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she might have imagined the heated look he had given her the night she had agreed to marry him. She had felt a frisson of something, that was certain. But now it looked as though the attraction was all on her side.

  He had not minced his words the night he had carried her back from the woods, she recalled on a shaft of pain. He had told her in no uncertain terms that she was too thin, bedraggled and plain to rouse any lust in him.

  He had gone ahead and married her, because she had gone to him and more or less begged him to change his mind.

  But he had said he wanted children. Had been most insistent on that point.

  ‘Or have you changed your mind?’ she blurted that night after sitting through another supper, in another inn, eaten in virtual silence.

  He looked up at her with a frown. ‘Changed my mind about what?’

  ‘About the nature of our marriage.’ She had not meant to say anything. She had meant to try to just fit in with whatever he wanted. But they would be reaching Bowdon Manor the next day, and she was no nearer understanding what might be expected of her once they got there than she had been on her wedding day. How was she to fit in with what he wanted, when she did not know what it was?

  ‘Is this to be a marriage in name only, after all?’

  He went very still. ‘Is that what you wish?’

  ‘No, oh, no!’

  How could he think that? Had she somehow made
him think she would not welcome his advances? But she had told him to his face that she was quite willing to provide him with heirs.

  Yes, a little voice whispered in the back of her mind, you may have said that, but actions speak louder than words. Perhaps he cannot forget that you ran out into the woods, flinched from his touch when he had you on that bed, actually cringed in terror at one point.

  Oh, no! How could she convince him that far from being afraid of his touch, she was growing impatient for it?

  She could think of only one way.

  Nervously, she stood up. Naturally, Septimus got to his feet as well.

  She smiled at him as she went round the table. Looked up at him coyly, through her eyelashes, the way she had observed women doing to signal readiness to the male of their choosing.

  His response was not very encouraging—he looked puzzled.

  She must not be getting this … flirting, quite right! Well, she had never done anything but keep men at bay until now. She was bound to not be very good at it. She would just have to act more boldly.

  ‘Septimus,’ she said, looping her arms round his neck.

  ‘You do not need to worry that I am afraid of you any more. You have been so very kind to me this week,’ she said and, rather more daringly, reached up and pressed a kiss against his cheek.

  He made a strange noise in the back of his throat, and then, at last, he turned his head so that his lips met hers.

  Aimée gasped when he grabbed her and hauled her up hard against his body. Every point at which they made contact felt warm and tingly. Her soft breasts, pressed against his firm chest, her quivering thighs against the solidity of his. Oh, this felt good! She could not believe how good, for men had caught and held her like this once or twice before and pressed their slobbering mouths against hers, filling her with revulsion, and the overwhelming urge to escape.

  Septimus did not slobber. His mouth was firm yet insistent, as he expertly prised her lips apart. Her knees buckled when he plunged his tongue between her parted lips and began to explore the inside of her mouth. And far from wanting to escape, her instinctive reaction was to cling to him. Tightly.

  His hands traced the curve of her spine, leaving a trail of warm … yearning in their wake. When they came to rest against the upper curve of her bottom, a wave of sensation so strong surged through her that her entire body shuddered.

  And suddenly, with an oath, he thrust her roughly away.

  ‘Enough of this!’ he growled, stalking to the door and yanking it open.

  Aimée reeled, one hand pressed to lips that still tingled with the power of his kiss, staring at him with shocked eyes.

  ‘Oh, but—’

  ‘Do not say another word, madam!’ he snarled, holding up his hand as though warding off a blow. ‘It will not be like this between us!’

  Septimus strode through the door, slamming it shut behind him. She had fluttered her eyelashes at him, puckered up her lips, and he had been helpless to resist. He had been torn between falling to his knees in gratitude or ripping off her clothes and falling on her! The tide of lust that had swept through him the minute he had felt her lips part under his had been so strong, so primal, that, for a few seconds, his mind had ceased to function altogether.

  He entered his bedroom, went across to a side table and, with shaking hands, wrenched the stopper off a decanter of brandy. The worst of it was, he suspected this show of interest was a direct result of his generosity towards her this week. And, dammit, he’d suffered through one marriage where his wife only granted her favours in return for gifts! But at least the horrible suspicion that she was behaving like Miranda dealt with his painful arousal.

  Could a husband not just be generous because he wanted to make his wife smile? Did it all have to be reduced to a sordid commercial transaction between them? He had not thought Aimée had the soul of a whore!

  And what had there been in his behaviour to make her think he was the kind of man who would expect that of her? Going shopping had just been a way of spending time with her. So that they could get to know each other.

  So that, when he decided the time was right …

  He downed his drink in one go.

  The trouble was, it would be the right time for him all the time. The change in her, when she had come tripping into his makeshift study, in one of the gowns she had chosen! Well, it was so startling that it was all he could do not to gape at her with his tongue hanging out. He had no notion how she had done it, but somehow the clothing she had picked out had accentuated her beauty. She looked so delicious that he had wanted to leap across the desk and ravish her on the spot.

  And she was far too innocent to indulge in that kind of behaviour, in broad daylight. Though with each day that passed, it was growing increasingly difficult to maintain the self-control on which he prided himself.

  It was feeling her shudder when he had ground his throbbing erection against her belly that had brought him back to his senses. He had been on the verge of confirming her very worst assumptions. Getting his money’s worth out of her, right across the dining table, whilst she was having to steel herself to go through with it. Just as she’d had to steel herself to go through with the wedding.

  And afterwards, no doubt, when she’d come to her senses, she would have broken down and wept again. Just as she had on their wedding night.

  Septimus had calmed down considerably by the morning. He knew he would have to go and apologise for shouting at her. He should not have repudiated her misguided attempt—to reward him, he supposed—quite so roughly. He had upset her, storming out like that, when all she had been guilty of was trying to make the best of a circumstance he had imposed on her.

  Aimée was a plucky little thing. And she meant well. Yes, he was sure she had no intention of insulting him by offering her body in return for what she must have seen as his generosity.

  He would apologise for pawing at her like some ravening beast while he was at it, and make it quite clear she had no need to do anything she found unpalatable. Explain that he would wait until she was more accustomed to him. His proposal had come as a shock to her; she’d had serious misgivings about taking the plunge, and, once she had said yes, he had rushed her to the altar before she had a chance to change her mind again. He was not going to rush her into anything else. Particularly not once he had recognised how highly she prized her virtue. Dammit, she had run out into the night in just the clothes she stood up in, because she had mistaken his clumsily-worded proposal for the worst kind of proposition!

  He only hoped, once he had made it all clear, they could make a fresh start.

  He knocked on the door of her room, twitching his neckcloth into place. He did not think he had felt so unsure of himself since he had been a young midshipman, sent to meet the captain of his very first ship.

  She came and opened the door herself, her cheeks colouring when she saw who it was. He supposed that was only to be expected, after the way he had left things the night before. Before he could say a word, she had turned away from him and returned to the packing of her trunk, which his arrival had interrupted.

  No tears and sulks and moping about in bed for his Aimée! He had noted before that she was always up and busy quite early, and was always efficient with her packing. He liked that about her. Some women, he had heard tell, made a great production about moving to a new place, but not her.

  ‘I need to apologise,’ he began, then found something lodged in his throat as she bent to retrieve something from the bed. The silk of her gown had draped provocatively over her delectable rear end, making speech quite impossible for a moment or two.

  Eventually he managed to look away and focus on the jumbled pile of belongings that lay on the bed, to distract himself from the base urges that were surging through him. And form the words, ‘I should not have spoken to you so roughly last night.’

  She straightened up, and turned to look at him in surprise, at the very same moment he noticed a book that she must have bo
rrowed from the library at The Lady’s Bower.

  ‘You do not mean to pack this, I hope?’ he said, going to pick it up.

  ‘Well, yes, I do.’

  ‘I am sorry, Aimée, but you cannot keep it. I told you that the place is only leased, did I not?’ He felt a surge of irritation that he had to deal with this minor issue, when there was a much more crucial matter he wanted to deal with. ‘I suppose I should have explained that many of the items there belong to the owners, not myself, including nearly all the books in the library. I am afraid we shall have to return it.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, ‘but I may keep it for a day or so, may I not, and send it back when, um.’

  ‘It does not do to put off little tasks like this. Once put aside, they easily get forgotten. And I would not abuse my tenancy by depleting the library of books that may very well have some sentimental value to the owners.’

  He actually had his hand on the book when she darted forwards and tried to snatch it up. Between the pair of them, somehow, the book slithered from both their grasps, and landed with a thud on the floor.

  ‘What the …?’

  From between the yellowed pages, half-a-dozen flowers fluttered to the bare boards of the inn floor.

  She dropped to her knees, gathering them up with her head bent, though he could see the dull flush on her cheeks.

  ‘I only took the book so that I could press some flowers between its pages,’ she muttered. ‘Here,’ she said, standing up, and thrusting the book into his hands, before dropping to her knees again to gather up the sorry-looking specimens of flora.

  ‘Who has been giving you flowers?’

  ‘Your crew!’ she said tartly. ‘Don’t you remember?’ Her eyes flashed angrily. ‘Nobody has ever given me flowers before, and it was such a lovely gesture that I wanted to preserve the moment …’

  She blinked, got up and spun away from him, but not before he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes.

  ‘It was quite ridiculous of me …’ she paused to swipe away something from her face ‘ … to indulge in such sentimental nonsense when this is just a b-business arrangement. You have made it perfectly clear that I am nothing more than a means to an end … and that is perfectly f-fine …’